1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bladder for an inflatable ball with electrical wiring.
2. Background Art
Over the last years the advance of microelectronics has made it possible to provide balls, such as soccer balls, with electrical and/or electronic components. For example, U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0162170 A1, EP 1 637 192 A1, DE 103 50 300 A1, and DE 10 2007 013 025 A1 disclose the arrangement of different sensors, receivers, transmitters or speakers within the bladder of a ball.
A balanced arrangement of several electronic or electrical components, which does not negatively affect the playing properties of the ball, requires either a common positioning in the centre of the bladder or a separate but essentially symmetric distribution of the components so that the ball has no substantial un-balanced mass. If separate components have to be electrically connected, for example, if a small accumulator supplies power to an electronic device, the components must be electrically connected by means of a wire or the like. DE 103 50 300 A1 discloses a centered arrangement of a charging cable between two bladder chambers. If there is sufficient air pressure in the bladder chambers, the cable and the connected electronic component are fixed in the center of the bladder by adjacent walls of the two bladder chambers. In the above-mentioned U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0162170 A1, the electrical cable also extends centrally between two oppositely arranged components through the interior of the bladder and therefore interconnects the two components using a direct path.
The inventor of the present invention understands that the known arrangements may provide a balanced ball construction. However, they are not suitable to withstand the dynamic requirements of a ball, as they occur in particular for soccer balls. In case of a sharp shot, for example for a penalty kick, a soccer ball is subject to considerable forces, which may lead to the ball deforming to a banana-like shape. The wirings inside a bladder known from the prior art cannot withstand such forces so that the cable, its contacts or the connected component are damaged. This applies in particular to freely extending wires inside the bladder but also to the arrangement of wires between two internal bladder walls, in particular if there is an insufficient air pressure in the two bladder chambers so that the cable is not sufficiently fixed.
The present invention is therefore based on the problem to provide a bladder for an inflatable ball having an electrical wiring which is capable of withstanding these loads more efficiently than the arrangements known in the prior art and therefore provides a more reliable function of the connected electrical and/or electronic components.